City staffers walked City Commissioners through their annual report on the streets division of public works during their April 15 work session.
Eric Boyd, the streets division manager, and Chris Gaub, city public works director, said they focused their report this year on the overall condition index, or OCI, for city streets.
Boyd asked commissioners how they’d rate city streets on a letter grade scale.
Commissioner Shannon Wilson said her street is an F.
Commissioner Joe McKenney said he thinks the streets are good.
Boyd said that the overall city street network has a D rating.
Gaub said that residents probably want a better rated street network, but probably don’t understand or support the associated costs.
To rehabilitate one block of a city street costs about $500,000, Boyd said.
The OCI is the city’s system to measure and monitor city streets and rates their level of service, which ranges from failed to excellent.
“An excellent level of service comes with an excellent level of cost,” Boyd said.
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To have that high level of service on city streets, it has to be funded, but failed streets cost less now, but those costs will eventually catch up to the city, he said.
City streets lose about 60 percent of their quality in about 75 percent of their lifecycle, or about 20 to 30 years, Boyd said, so investing in rehabilitation or maintenance saves money in the long run.
The OCI scores run from 0 to 100, looking at pavement condition, roughness and other factors.
Boyd said the streets division uses the OCI to inform their decisions about maintenance and rehabilitation.
Historically, city staff developed the OCI through windshield surveys but last year, the city contracted for data collection.
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Under that contract, the contractor drove all city streets twice with specialty equipment that scans the roadways for conditions.
The OCI also looks at the age of the street, age of utilities under the street, curb and gutter and street classifications.
Boyd described the current network score of 68.4, as a “pretty okay condition.”
The pavement condition index component of the score is 74, which is above the national average, Boyd said.
Ninety-five percent of city streets are in fair to excellent condition, Boyd said, and about 73 percent need major work ranging from chip seal to replacement.
According to the streets division’s April 1 presentation to commissioners, 3.83 percent of city streets are in poor condition and 1.14 percent are failed.
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Boyd said that since the city’s 2013 survey of the city street network, the overall condition index score improved by seven points, due to the city’s efforts to continually maintain roads.
He said they’ve focused on the fair streets to get them repaired before they turned into poor and failed streets.
“Conditions are always changing, one bad winter can upset this graph in major ways,” Boyd said.
Boyd said that all major Montana cities assess their street network in some fashion, but Great Falls was the only community doing a full survey, something they presented on at a conference last year.
Great Falls isn’t alone in their street network score, which Boyd said many communities nationwide have a D+ rating, according to the American Society for Civil Engineer’s 2025 U.S. infrastructure report card, and the estimate to improve by one grade nationally is $2.58 trillion.
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The cost to fix all of Great Falls’ street network now would cost an estimated $91 million, Boyd said, which would require about a 1,500 percent increase in the street assessment for the upcoming budget year.
To hold at the current level, there’s no budget gap, but streets would continue to deteriorate, potentially dropping the overall network score.
To increase to an overall network score of 70, there’s a $14 million budget gap and the street assessment would need to increase by about 1.5 percent annually for 15 years.
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City staff are recommending a 7.5 percent annual increase for the upcoming budget year toward a 15-year plan to increase the overall network score to 80, which has an estimated $75 million budget gap currently.
Boyd said conditions can change so it’s not responsible to set the street assessment rate for multiple year.
The city sets the streets assessment annually as part of its budget process, which includes public hearings, typically in July.
Boyd said development will be a factor in future years and the city may need to increase the standards on new roads.
Commissioner Joe McKenney said he was having trouble connecting the dots of city staff’s presentation and said that the East Fiesta road project completed this year was about $1 million, so if the city were to increase the street assessment to generate about $8.3 million in additional revenue, they could do about 8.3 blocks of street reconstruction.
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Boyd said earlier in the meeting that it costs about $500,000 per block for street rehabilitation.
The increased street assessment revenue, Boyd said, would be used for street replacement, routine maintenance and advancement to improve roads.
McKenney said the city must not do much major street replacement.
Boyd said no, they do not as it takes years of saving to do those major projects.
Commissioner Shannon Wilson said that back in the 1970s, every spring 10th Avenue South would breakup. Now it’s pretty good and she’d worked with some asphalt engineers during her career who had “a lot of nifty things” they can do to extend the lifespan of roads.
Boyd said they consider all of those options.
10th Avenue South is maintained by the Montana Department of Transportation.
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Commissioners approved a 10 percent streets assessment in 2024.
Boyd said the city has the second most miles of city streets in Montana but the second least amount of funding per mile.
City Manager Greg Doyon said that in discussions with public works regarding infrastructure and development, he asked if they get a lot of requests from developers for the city to improve streets for their projects.
Boyd said they do get questions from developers on improving or widening roads in association with their projects.
Doyon said the city has limited resources for unscheduled work, which Boyd said was about $250,000 annually.
That amount might get about two blocks of improvements, he said.
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Typically, the city requires developers to pay for infrastructure related to their projects that must meet city standards, and once complete, the city accepts that infrastructure into its system for continued maintenance, funded by ratepayers.
Doyon said he’s not sure the public appreciates how much the city is being asked to cover costs for development and how do they talk about that when increasing fees while being more attractive to development.
